John Sutherland
The Sunday Times
Feb 6, 2000.
Trouble in Racial Paradise.
THE NEW CITY. By Stephen Amidon.
Readability in fiction is not something we normally measure. Thackeray (a slave to his belly) likened readable novels (he was thinking of Alexandre Dumas) to jam tarts. They satisfy healthy childish appetites. For EMForster a readable story was like a tapeworm: it ate you (he was thinking of Walter Scott). We use the expression "page-turner". In a season when everyone is nibbling madeleines and sipping Proust, Stephen Amidon's The New City is a novel to devour and be devoured by.
Not that it is a simple book. It belongs to the broad stream of American naturalism, a line that goes back from John O'Hara, through James Gould Cozzens to Theodore Dreiser. It is a no-nonsense style of writing that can deal efficiently with big subjects and no subject is bigger than America.
The New City is set in 1973. It is a period high on utopian slogans: "Peace with Honor", "The New Frontier". Above all, Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society". America's social and racial problems, it was fondly believed, could be solved by investing in people. Effectively, this meant good, affordable housing - "projects" as they were called. Vast federal handouts were funnelled through Hud (Housing and Urban Development), the biggest pork barrel in American history.
Newton, Amidon's imaginary "new city", is the Great Society made bricks and mortar. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is its founding principle: no discrimination on grounds of race. It is planned, suburban, ethnically diverse and prosperous. And it is falling apart. Why? In the background, Watergate festers like a broken sewer. The Vietnam sore has not healed and won't. Above all, the race problem won't go away simply because you put an expensive roof over its head.
I sometimes think that fiction, Spike Lee films and stand-up, off-camera comedy are the only places where race can be honestly discussed now. The New City, like Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full, deals with America's hot-button topic - why can't blacks and whites "just get along" (as poor old beat-up Rodney King put it). The plot of The New City follows the intricate falling out of two friends, Newton's "city fathers" as they see themselves. Austin Swope, the city manager, is white. Earl Wooten, Newton's construction manager, is black. They live in mansions, dress smartly and drive this year's most expensive gas-guzzlers. Pigment apart, they look to the outsider like peas in a pod, American success stories. Their sons, Teddy and Joel, are best buddies, both about to take off for their respective colleges. In the meantime, they are "living": sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. If it was good to be alive in 1973, to be young was bliss. It is pure Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, or it should be. Give everyone a thick slice of American pie and your problems just melt away.
Alas, the new Eden is seething with old serpents. Austin hears a rumour that Earl is after his job. Joel falls in love with a white girl from across the tracks. Joel is not Harry Belafonte black, he is "black". Susan is the daughter of a bitter 'Nam veteran and a German mother who never quite got the Nazis out of her system. Neither is high on assimilation. Teddy, it gradually emerges, is gay (a word still waiting to be born: in 1973, he is just another faggot). Old Earl has something going for him on the side - a welfare girlfriend who cooks him soul food.
The cracks in personal relationships widen into gulfs as large as the old racial divisions the new city was designed to heal. Meanwhile, Newton itself is going down the tubes fast. The future, its Chicago money men decide (having sucked all the gravy out of Hud), is in theme parks.
This novel has so many irons in its fire that it sometimes risks losing itself in a maze of subplot. And the apocalyptic climax is slightly rich for my taste(too much jam on the tart). But, long as it is, I could have wished it a Proustian seven volumes.
The Sunday Times
Feb 6, 2000.
Trouble in Racial Paradise.
THE NEW CITY. By Stephen Amidon.
Readability in fiction is not something we normally measure. Thackeray (a slave to his belly) likened readable novels (he was thinking of Alexandre Dumas) to jam tarts. They satisfy healthy childish appetites. For EMForster a readable story was like a tapeworm: it ate you (he was thinking of Walter Scott). We use the expression "page-turner". In a season when everyone is nibbling madeleines and sipping Proust, Stephen Amidon's The New City is a novel to devour and be devoured by.
Not that it is a simple book. It belongs to the broad stream of American naturalism, a line that goes back from John O'Hara, through James Gould Cozzens to Theodore Dreiser. It is a no-nonsense style of writing that can deal efficiently with big subjects and no subject is bigger than America.
The New City is set in 1973. It is a period high on utopian slogans: "Peace with Honor", "The New Frontier". Above all, Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society". America's social and racial problems, it was fondly believed, could be solved by investing in people. Effectively, this meant good, affordable housing - "projects" as they were called. Vast federal handouts were funnelled through Hud (Housing and Urban Development), the biggest pork barrel in American history.
Newton, Amidon's imaginary "new city", is the Great Society made bricks and mortar. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is its founding principle: no discrimination on grounds of race. It is planned, suburban, ethnically diverse and prosperous. And it is falling apart. Why? In the background, Watergate festers like a broken sewer. The Vietnam sore has not healed and won't. Above all, the race problem won't go away simply because you put an expensive roof over its head.
I sometimes think that fiction, Spike Lee films and stand-up, off-camera comedy are the only places where race can be honestly discussed now. The New City, like Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full, deals with America's hot-button topic - why can't blacks and whites "just get along" (as poor old beat-up Rodney King put it). The plot of The New City follows the intricate falling out of two friends, Newton's "city fathers" as they see themselves. Austin Swope, the city manager, is white. Earl Wooten, Newton's construction manager, is black. They live in mansions, dress smartly and drive this year's most expensive gas-guzzlers. Pigment apart, they look to the outsider like peas in a pod, American success stories. Their sons, Teddy and Joel, are best buddies, both about to take off for their respective colleges. In the meantime, they are "living": sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. If it was good to be alive in 1973, to be young was bliss. It is pure Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, or it should be. Give everyone a thick slice of American pie and your problems just melt away.
Alas, the new Eden is seething with old serpents. Austin hears a rumour that Earl is after his job. Joel falls in love with a white girl from across the tracks. Joel is not Harry Belafonte black, he is "black". Susan is the daughter of a bitter 'Nam veteran and a German mother who never quite got the Nazis out of her system. Neither is high on assimilation. Teddy, it gradually emerges, is gay (a word still waiting to be born: in 1973, he is just another faggot). Old Earl has something going for him on the side - a welfare girlfriend who cooks him soul food.
The cracks in personal relationships widen into gulfs as large as the old racial divisions the new city was designed to heal. Meanwhile, Newton itself is going down the tubes fast. The future, its Chicago money men decide (having sucked all the gravy out of Hud), is in theme parks.
This novel has so many irons in its fire that it sometimes risks losing itself in a maze of subplot. And the apocalyptic climax is slightly rich for my taste(too much jam on the tart). But, long as it is, I could have wished it a Proustian seven volumes.